The School

Here’s how to solve those five itchy problems in contemporary modern physics I spoke about this past Saturday …

First, get a billion dollars.

(For some reason, this old joke comes to mind: How do you become a millionaire? First, get a billion dollars. Then, buy an airline.)

Anyway, the billion will be our bankroll. But we’re going to do a little something different with it.

We’re going to buy a school.

Not a school here, mind you, ‘here’ meaning the US of A. No. We need to get past that malignant thing called the NEA. So, we’ll buy a school in Switzerland. Or whatever country has the most hands-off policy towards education. We’ll set one up in Antarctica if we have to. This is too important to waste time and money dueling with fat bureaucrats.

Then, you populate it. With the youngest l’il geniuses you can find.

This is by no means an original thought. Plato (in the voice of Socrates) spoke about something similar in The Republic 2,500 years ago. However, the idea of breeding humans for specific purposes, of stealing them from their parent’s arms as infants, of systematically training them as they mature – such an idea I find revolting and repugnant, and rightfully so. We are not to play God.

However, I see no problem with allowing free will to remain in place. Incentivized free will, if you will, and that’s where some of that billion comes in.

You hire the best scientific minds – geneticists and behavioral psychologists – to locate a massive pool of potential applicants for the School. (Note the draconian upper-case S – mwah hah hah hah!) These potential applicants would have to be very young, maybe six or seven years old. Can be of any gender, but the School segregates (up to a certain age – read on). Say, 2,000 are located worldwide (and I’d wager that at least 50 percent come from Israel and the Far East).

Then, you pay them (their families, until the young scholars reach a certain age), an annuity for the rest of their lives if they wish to test themselves in the School. Set up rigorous mathematics and physics, and create a culture that nourishes and thrives on accomplishment. Positive rewards and reinforcements – absolutely nothing negative here. And it all must be 100 percent voluntary. If a student wishes to leave, he or she may. They’ll forfeit that lifelong annuity, but they’ll get a bonus for trying.

From age six or seven these children will learn. Not revisionist history, not gender politics, nothing of that sort. They will learn all forms of mathematics and all forms of physics. Electives in other sciences, sure, it will stimulate the mental juices. But the emphasis at the School will be on cutting edge, modern, state-of-the-art physics. Specifically, those five problems.

Free-form brainstorming will be encouraged. So will out-and-out daydreaming. The children may read whatever they wish to read. They can talk about whatever they want to talk about. Older students will be encouraged to mentor younger ones. Games of all types will be played – all with the goal of solving the Big Five. High achievers in physics and math will be rewarded generously with all sorts of recognitions and perks.

The School must remain ruthlessly apolitical, and must not be tied down to any philosophy other than solving those Five Problems. (And, of course, as each is solved dozens more of all shapes and sizes will crop up.) This leads me to believe that the School must be secret. That entails whole sets of problems I can’t even begin to fathom at the moment. But unless it is such a school will become a target by those who will feel threatened by its existence. Which I imagine most of contemporary civilization will be, for right or wrong.

I think it’s true – and I’m almost positive research has borne this out – that young children are sponges when it comes to learning, particularly languages. They pick up stuff so fast and their memory is phenomenal. Working with my daughter with math, I never shake the nagging feeling that, at age 7, she should have mastered multiplication and division by now, and be well immersed in algebra and geometry. I know she could do it if, well, someone sat down and did it with her. I myself have taught her how to do column math in her head while we drive about on Saturday mornings. It can be done. It can also be done better, and on a wider-scale.

By the time a child at the School reaches double-digits, he or she will have mastered all math up to calculus, basic physics, introductory quantum mechanics, wave mechanics, relativity theory, electrical theory and basic application, and basic chemistry. Now before you give me the Beavis-watching-a-Winger-video look, remember, these will all be kids who score high on aptitude and interest assessments, so they’ll enjoy studying these subjects together.

Originally I was for gender-segregated partitions of the School, but now I don’t think so. Don’t want to create any unnecessary drama, and I’m not lumping the hormone-driven rages young teens have in this category. I think that’s natural, and in a way, I think it can enhance creativity in some strange bizarre way. So I wouldn’t go out of my way hindering. Now, it’s also an undeniable fact (and not a politically-correct one) that men outnumber women something like 9 to 1 in higher math and physics studies. That will be a problem. Not for social engineering purposes (not the School’s mission), but as our talent pool enters puberty. That’s why the School will have to staff plenty of empathetic and mature psychologists of both genders.

Establish the School, and in twenty years each of those five problems will be solved. That’s a guarantee. I only ask to be let in on the ground floor to write its story.